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Betrayed
by your gang members and framed for murder its time to clear your
name in the latest Free-Roaming Beat-‘Em-Up from Capcom. Once
heralded as the king of the genre ruled by the Final Fight and
Streets Of Rage series with an iron fist, the Scrolling
Beat-‘Em-Up is one of those genres that fell to the wayside in the
3D leap of the mid-nineties. Rebirth of-sorts hit the genre hard
with the likes of God Of War and Onimusha
cross-breeding with a strain of Adventure game DNA, but still
nothing has hit quite as hard as Final Fight CD from SEGA’s
ill-fated Mega-CD. Capcom have vowed to change this, and regain
their crown; with the likes of Final Fight: Streetwise and Beat
Down: Fists Of Vengeance.
Set
in the gritty city where violence and gangs are of common place, the
main Story Mode sees you taking control of one of five gang members
and trying to prove your innocence and find out who has set you up. There
are ten Chapters to get through, and as the main character your job
is to evade capture from the cops and avoid getting killed by the
mob. There are many ways that you can do this, whenever you are
spotted by cops/gangs or getting beaten and bruised your Awareness
Meters goes up. When the Meter reaches 100 you will be
recognised and virtually every one will try to kill you on sight,
nice.  But the neat trick is when the Meter does inevitably go up you
can change your appearance by visiting one of the many clothes and
jewellery stores so your opponents will not be able to recognise
you. Or on the other hand if things get really bad then you can go
to the local hospital, where you can get those nasty cuts and
bruises treated or some plastic surgery and a nice tattoo which will
make you even more unrecognisable to your pursuers.
In
order to make the money needed for disguises, when you are in a
fight and win you get the option to rob them of their money and any
valuables, Interrogate them for mission info and help, beat-up on
them some more if you don’t think that they got the message in the
first bout or get them to join your gang and fight by your side.
Offering them your hand will add them to your Cell Phone list, which
you can then contact them from when you need a little help - in
major battles, they will fight alongside  you. Certainly a nice
feature of the game - almost letting you customise your very own
posse – clearly inspired by the more substantial console RPGs.
The
control system is easy enough to pick up but with no way of
targeting individual fighters when involved in a fight with multiple
adversaries, the layout is simple perhaps a little too simple. Once
you have been round the city in the early Chapters nothing new
really unlocks within the city; so you will find yourself back in
the same places thorough the game. The other annoying part is than
many of the fights you encounter along the way take place by the
roadside and when fighting multiple attackers it spills out onto the
road leading to many accidents involving cars – very nice or very
nasty, depending on which side you are on!
There
are many weapons available throughout the game including knifes,
pipes, planks and the odd shotgun which defeated fighters and
adversaries drop, or you can purchase them from various dodgy people
within the city and sell them on to other gang members when you are
running low on cash.
The
graphics in the game are visually stunning; combined with the
ambient soundtrack the title has the power to make you weary of what
is round the next street corner. The fight sounds are also very cool, reminiscent of Bruce
lee films packing another punch in this dark and sinister game.
The
title has clearly been borne from a love of the 16-bit era – a
glimmering beacon of hope with some nice touches thrown in; for
instance the visual scars, cuts and bruises which you have to get
treated – in a much less distancing context than the
just-short-of-the-mark Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Also
the fight control system works really well despite the difficulty in
targeting an opponent, and fielding such new ideas in a fleeting
genre cannot be seen as anything other than respectable. However,
all the respect in the world won’t make you have fun when a title
has reached its’ apex before its prime.
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